Headlines: Mesbah Joins Chorus against Mashaei

A cartoon carried by hardline Fars, a semi-official news agency, depicts scene of a recent junket organized by Ahmadinejad's office for accomplished Iranian expats. (This is not the first time the President's chief of staff has reached out to Iranians abroad.)

Mashaei (Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff): We didn't see much good from the Iranians in Iran. Let's see what we can do with Iranians outside Iran.

Whispering aide: With such a turnout, the next [presidential election] is yours.

Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, head of the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, strongly criticized those who are "promoting the school of Iran instead of the school of Islam," in a gathering of Iranian army and revolutionary guards commanders and officials. He added, "These people are not our comrades; we have no permanent friendship to anyone, but to those who are following Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Islam."

"Did Imam Khomeini ever refrain from mentioning Islam in a speech and say Iran instead?" Mesbah Yazdi asked the crowd rhetorically. "If we are the followers of Khomeini's path, which was the correct path to true Islam, we have to have the same attitude."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday added her voice to the growing international chorus condemning what Iranian human rights activists say is expanding use of execution as almost routine punishment in Iran.

But Clinton said that other cases where Iranians face execution for "exercising their right to free expression" after the disputed June 2009 elections, or for homosexuality, suggest that many legal cases in Iran are not proceeding "with the transparency or due process enshrined in Iran's own constitution."

Iran announced plans Monday to get rid of its dollar and euro reserves in response to the latest U.N. sanctions over its contested nuclear program.

"To fight sanctions, we will remove the dollar and euro from our foreign exchange basket and will replace them with (the Iranian) rial and the currency of any country cooperating with us," Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency. "We consider these currencies (dollar and euro) dirty and won't sell oil in dollar and euro," he added.

Iran's inflation rate is expected to fall under the 9 percent level by the end of the current Iranian month, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) says.

"Iran's inflation rate has been decreasing from 9.9 percent in Ordibehesht, [April 22 to May 21] to 9.1 percent in Tir [June 22 to July 21,] and is predicted to drop further in the up-coming months," Mahmoud Bahmani said during the CBI's 50th general meeting on Tuesday.

An advisor to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied on Tuesday expressing Tehran's readiness for nuclear talks with the United States, the official news agency IRNA reported.

"This report that 'we are ready for talks with America about the nuclear programme' is denied," the office of Ali Akbar Velayati said in a statement.

Velayati had told reporters at a news conference in the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Monday: "While we do not have any faith in the American government... Iran is ready for talks on its nuclear programme."

Iran came back from behind to beat Armenia 3-1 in a friendly match in Yerevan on Wednesday evening.

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